


Первая утрата (The First Loss)

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Nochnoy Dozor | Night Watch (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:53:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To the humans, it was twilight. To us, it was dawn. (Anton/Kostya)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Первая утрата (The First Loss)

**Author's Note:**

> The song that Anton's strangely perceptive CD player coughs up is "Svoboda" (Freedom) by the band DDT, written by Yuri Shevchuk. The translation of the lyrics is my own.   
>  Also, er, may I remark parenthetically that I've been admiring your fanart since I was a teenaged Gundam Wing fanboy. So that's - almost half a decade, wow. It was an honor to have the chance to do something for you this year.
> 
> Written for Ponderosa

 

 

To the humans, it was twilight. To us, it was dawn. And the opposite was true as well. When the sun rose, we, the Others, could no longer move in perfect freedom. Whatever had happened during the night, the subject was now closed, and what was done could not be undone. For better or for worse.

I sensed, rather than saw, the figure lying beside me. He was looking at me, with those steady, serious eyes. "Anton," Kostya whispered. "Wake up. We missed the night."

It didn't take long for my vision to adjust. It was still night, still dark. But it had gotten lighter, somehow - a diffusion, as if a drop of ink had fallen into a glass of water. The grey of dawn was nascent. This was the first loss.

"I'm sorry, Kostya," I murmured. "I didn't think I'd fall asleep."

He clambered over me and dropped off the side of the bed where we had left our clothes. The floorboards creaked, just a bit. Half-asleep, I listened to the intimate sounds - Kostya groping in the pile for his shorts, trying to feel the difference between my shirt and his shirt in the darkness, disentangling socks and sleeves and cuffs. I could hear his breath, six inches from my ear. I reached out to touch him, and feel, without seeing, the shape of his hips and flat stomach. Come back.

He caught my arm and pulled gently. The gesture was innocent, but not childlike - more conviction in it than you would expect from a child.

"No," he said firmly. "Come on, get up."

I knew better than to protest. These were the last moments of the nighttime - moments of stillness and truth. Kostya wouldn't let them go to waste.

The floorboards were cold beneath my feet. I rose, took Kostya by the waist, placed a hand on his stomach. My smallest finger brushed against the band of his shorts. "Kostya ... "

"Anton," he said quietly, "I don't want to miss it."

The shorts slid off anyway. But Kostya broke away. I made a soft sound in the back of my throat. He slipped on one of my jackets, that olive winter coat. It ended halfway down his thighs. He looked like a vulnerable young girl, with his white bare legs in the moonlight. He grinned at me, his eyes sleepy and warm.

He let me put my clothes on, and a few minutes later we were headed up the apartment stairwell, trying very hard to be quiet. There was a huge window here above the stairs - to let the moonlight in when tenants came in late at night, I realized. It was high up, in an inconvenient place. The iron frame was pale with dust, and the crack in one pane was sealed by a yellowed piece of packing tape. The familiar smell of a Soviet building, paint and old metal and concrete, mixed with the clear, cold night.

It was earlier than I thought it was. In a few minutes we would be somewhere between darkness and dawn. Light enough to make out the features of Kostya's face, but not light enough to read them. And then the first few streaks of color would come, along with all the rest of what is traditionally thought of as daybreak.

Kostya went on ahead of me. I set my footsteps out of alignment with his, so as to hear his bare feet against the stairs. My boots were on. They fell too heavy, sounded clumsy.

He led me up the last flight and pushed open the heavy door to the roof without hesitating. The scent of the building disappeared in the wind. The air was clear as ice.

"Ach, how can you stand this?" I asked. My teeth were chattering.

"This is Moscow," said Kostya, without turning around. He was heading towards the edge. "Considering the season, it's practically warm."

Maybe vampires were less sensitive to the cold than humans?

I was about to ask Kostya.

Then I realized that he wouldn't know.

"Don't be stupid," I said gruffly. I opened my jacket and drew him close. He didn't protest or pull away, but rested his head against my shoulder and sighed, as if he had been waiting for me to do it. I slid my hands into his jacket, massaged his soft back, tried to keep him warm. We stood there like that for a long time.

The Moscow lights were shining yellow and gold in the grey-blue haze appearing on the horizon. With my cheek resting in Kostya's hair, I watched them. A row of lights in a tall building went off at once - that must be a security guard going home for the day. One lone light in an office building blinked off abruptly. I smiled. Quite possibly a salaryman had fallen asleep at his desk during a particularly long night. He'd have some explaining to do to his poor wife. Godspeed, friend ...

Svetlana came into my mind, as if by her own accord. Kostya, sensing my thoughts, drew back and looked me in the eye. His jaw was set in defiance. Nothing in his face was resentful - just defiant. What was it he had said to me last night, that had got me into so much trouble? "What can she give you that I can't?" Even now he believed wholeheartedly that this was true.

I dismissed her image. In an hour. Maybe two. Then I would have no choice but to think of her. Only not now. I stroked Kostya's hair, without feeling the need to turn away my eyes. There was no shame in one more hour.

I kissed him. Without realizing I was doing it, without thinking. He parted his lips for me. That was all. And suddenly I felt a sense of place.

It's hard to imagine how big a roof is from the ground. All that empty space.

"You could put a basketball court here," said Kostya thoughtfully.

I wondered if anyone had ever considered living out on the roof out during Communist times, when two or three families would be sharing an apartment, living together like caged hamsters. It would have been possible for one man, an old man who didn't need much, to live out here on his own. There was a shed tucked away in the corner where it couldn't be seen from the streets. There wasn't much in there. Spiders, mice, a rake or a garden hose. Maybe Kostya's old bike from when he was a kid, unless they had done something else with it.

All in all, I had expected it to be more violent with a vampire, more ... bloodthirsty. And there had been elements of that the night before. But now he was yielding quietly and simply, like a young girl who was expecting love. And I did want to tell him that I loved him. I don't know why. I knew full well it wasn't love, but an emotion somewhere between pity and yearning.

Kostya's lips were pliant, and only slightly cold. I warmed his neck with my breath before I kissed him, feeling him squirm as I teased the soft flesh above his collarbone, slower and then faster. He was getting pretty hard. It excited me, of course. To think that I was doing this to Kostya ...

A halo had appeared on the horizon, a small glow, lost in the blue between two buildings on the skyline. Ivory haze tinged with mother-of-pearl, diffused on the backs of clouds that had been invisible until just now. Soon the sun - bright red or orange at first - would appear beneath the aureole. Then color. Light.

The night.

I needed him now.

Now.

Up against the shed door, Kostya fighting with the handle for a few frantic seconds - popped open with a shudder - the heavy smell of abandonment and dust fading into the cold air - we staggered inside, eyes closed to anything but each other - in the shadows again - thank God - I couldn't see Kostya, but I could hear his breath, drawing me towards him again, fumbling with shirts, zippers, buttons until our stomachs were touching and our hands had found bare skin, safe underneath our winter-jacket cocoons. I had him down on the floor of the shed.

We left the door open. So that we could see the city. So that we wouldn't miss the night.

No time for foreplay. His mouth on mine. My hand found his hips, his stiff cock.

He drew in a sharp breath. "Anton, slow down, that's too fast - "

"You don't like it?"

His breath was heavy. "No - I'm not sure - yes - don't stop - "

"Kostya - I want you to come for me -"

"Shit, I can't! I think it's too cold - fuck - "

"Shh, just tell me what to do to you - "

He bit his lip. "God, I'm so close! - wait, tie me up - it always gets me off - "

No time to lose. There was that tape. I yanked his skinny arms together, tied his wrists and wrapped his hands up with tape. Messy, but it did the job, Kostya couldn't even move his fingers. I pushed him into the corner and went down on his hard cock, Kostya's little hip bones against my cheek, moving mechanically, trying to buck himself to orgasm.

Kostya bit down on his lip hard, slamming off the air flow, trying not to breathe, don't inhale don't inhale don't inhale don't inhale, my hand moving to his windpipe, the sway of his hips getting desperate - it did the trick. His dick went rock solid the second he came in my mouth. I swallowed quick but he just kept spurting. It got everywhere. Shit!

So much for that jacket.

I rested my head on his thigh. I was comfortably hard. I could wait for mine. I wanted to stay here for a moment, with Kostya like this.

Transient calm.

Soon, of course, he started fidgeting, and I had to let him up. His hands were still bound. He was shivering with cold. I draped my jacket around his shoulders again, feeling tender.

He wanted to go over to the edge. I took him there, guiding him by the arm. If he lost balance with his hands tied, he'd probably fall. There was a concrete wall about waist-high, but I didn't want to take any chances with him.

I could have untied him, but Kostya didn't ask. And it felt right somehow, like this. Innocent, trusting Kostya - he had a good heart.

The morning came in nacreous tones, and then in sepia, long rays of gold threading their way through an entire city block, gilded clouds whipping across the reflection of a mirror-paneled skyscraper. It was a bright morning, but overcast.

"Is this what you wanted to see?" I asked. Kostya nodded.

People were starting to wake up. I moved a little closer to my fellow Other.

"Do you love people?" Kostya asked, after a time.

What a question at this hour! Pretty old-fashioned, at that.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Sometimes it's like in Dostoevsky. The more I love mankind, the more I hate people. And the more I hate people, the more I love mankind. And what about you?" I added, asking the question a little defensively.

"Yeah," he said, "Sure, I love the people."

I didn't know what to say. I hadn't expected him to respond that readily - and I hadn't expected a Dark One to reply in the affirmative, either. Not even one like Kostya.

The air smelled like the rain from last night. It would rain again today, more likely than not. It was the light, or the fresh air, but something in me moved and shifted, and all of a sudden I felt calm. In the face of the cold, cleansing air I was pacified, was transparent. I dug the packet of Sobranies out from the jacket Kostya was wearing. He gave me a grin.

"You smoke suspiciously often for the bastion of all that is good and holy in this world."

I put a cigarette to his mouth. He smiled and shut up. We split it that way. I held it to his lips and let him take a drag.

I thought of last night, of the windowsill that was streaked grey from the ashes of cigarettes we had smoked there before, Kostya sitting on the sill, one of his legs inside and the other outside, gripping the handle to keep him steady. I thought of the sunset we had watched, just last night. Pigeons on the rooftop of the apartment across from me, nervous because of the storm, coming together and flying apart. There were no crowds beneath the street, only a few men (men who had suffered) staggering towards home, men who wore the twilight like an overcoat. It was the warm weather and the gentle wind, but I loved their faces in that moment, the noses like a melted candle, badly-shaved chins, people who came together and flew apart - the streets were wide here and men still bumped shoulders, as if on purpose.

We were all silent. The heavens were about to open up. And when the rain came, it was warm. Boys rubbed their cold fingers and laughed, their mouths open and tongues out, racing one another for a friendly awning, even though they were already soaked. Three men passed around a bottle of vodka, the kind that sends white shivers up your spine. They huddled together - it's almost chilly. "It really tastes just like a mountain stream. Truth in advertising! Unprecedented!" one says, with a hint of nostalgia: his accents suggests he's from the Urals.

"Eh? For that price I should hope so!" Beside me Kostya is laughing.

Someone opens a window and turns on a record; American jazz. Someone is loved body and soul. And I waited on the windowsill, watching the white softness of a Moscow evening slowly turning into night, smoking, with my head out the window. A young mother passes and someone, smiling, tells her to put a jacket on her kid, who chokes on his own voice and waves his hands, impotently, towards his mom. Lights come on, one by one. The jazz record ends - and a few seconds later, just after the static fades into nothingness and the jazz lover realizes that she's holding her breath, the lights come on. I thought of someone slumped in their dark room, eyes shut, with her hard-lined mouth relaxed and her eyebrows (perhaps for the first time in her life) not knit together in world sorrow. All this as the shadows on the horizon rose up to meet the sun. And the vanishing of the sun meant nothing compared to that old recording. A few seconds before the lights came on, eyes shut, sinking into jazz - sinking into the long-forgotten bayou river with its heavy, dark green water. At peace, body and soul.

My neck aches. I realize that I'm standing with my head craned backwards, my eyes on that soft yellow glow, looking. I can almost see her if I try. Silhouette or a shadow on the pavement, restless as I am, moving around.

Someone, out of sight, is drunk and playing Dark Eyes on the guitar. A crowd of men roars happily along. A family that seems to be made up entirely of hairy old uncles leaves the cafe, joking at the top of their voices in Georgian. A couple young punks with shaved heads make amicable death threats, and part after some complicated handshake.

A man passes, murmuring to a spirit at the other end of his cell phone, " ... and it will not be found again." The sun is down.

Tears are in my eyes.

The rain disperses, and so do the people. The woman's child fell asleep in her arms, rocked to rest by her slow and steady steps. She didn't even move to fix her red headscarf, which, I imagine, is going to slip off and blow down the street. The three men made a vague promise (later broken) to meet again in the usual place, undoubtedly some bar. The boys ran away, chasing the pigeons down like young dogs, barking and yapping. Badly-shorn businessmen go home and are scolded by their loving wives, who like to touch his face when they give their welcome-home kiss. A crane on a truck, heading back from a construction site, rattles proudly, and in the distance the trackless tram screeches to a halt.

I shook my head, the memory fading with the cigarette smoke.

"They're interesting to watch ... " I said, leaning on the concrete barrier. "Do you ever come up here - just to watch them like this?"

He paused. "Maybe."

There was a hint of hunger in it. A current of pain shot through my heart. What is it, Dark One? Do you look at a crowd and see nothing but your next meal? You didn't yesterday. So what's the difference between then and now?

"We should go," said Kostya. "I - "

"No," I said. I grabbed his bound wrists. So thin, Kostya. I could almost hold both in one hand. "Don't. I've got you."

It wasn't going to be like this. Dark Other, Light Other. Not tonight.

He stared at me. I tightened my grip. "I have you. I own you. I love you. No matter how bad the hunger gets, I am stronger than you. I am in control."

Kostya licked his dry lips. "Anton? Let's - let's go inside."

* * *

And Konstantin believed. Hell, not only that, but it got him off. The freedom of weakness, the freedom in that the other man was strong.

He did it for the end, though. When Anton cut his hands loose (wouldn't waste time untying him, gave him his freedom in one fell swoop), took him by the shoulders, and turned Kostya to face him. Grabbed him and pulled him close - not to dominate him, without even a hint of violence, but to protect him, envelop him in Anton's arms. Anton thought that if he held Kostya tight enough, he could deliver him from evil. And for those fleeting moments, it was true. There was regret in that embrace. World sorrow. So much compassion.

And then Kostya was in Anton's arms, and nothing bad was ever going to happen again. Anton would kiss him, more tenderly somehow than before, sustaining one kiss for long, quiet minutes, until Kostya started to feel that aching weight in his prick once more. Then he'd have to pull away. Anton never wanted to do it twice in a row. Because he was older, maybe, or out of the lingering sense of shame that sometimes affects men, even those far freer than a Light One. It was, after all, a Roman - those closest to the Dark Ones in spirit - who had said this: triste est omne animal post coitum.

Sorrowful is every animal, after the act of sex.

Of course Kostya, who was young and didn't know how to pace himself, ended up getting too excited, to the point where it would hurt if he couldn't get release. He lay there, jerking off quietly into the mattress; - Anton curled up on his side, not facing him, faking indifference, their bodies not touching, alone. And then Anton did something so poignant, so platonic - propped himself up on one elbow and watched him, not like a lover but like a mother watching over her child as he sleeps, and stroked Kostya's forehead with his thumb. It sent a jolt of pain through the young man's heart.

Which made it pretty hard to get off.

He gave up. He really wasn't up to it for the third time in a row, anyway. They lay there together, Kostya's head on Anton's chest; the older, calloused hand resting protectively - always protectively - on the scruff of his neck. But there was no time to sleep. Anton was scheduled to head out to Koktebel in no less than an hour. He told Kostya this, hating himself for the - very valid - excuse.

The young vampire didn't say much in return.

Anton left Kostya there, in his own bed, dozing in a state of quiet hurt. It frustrated Anton that he felt that way. Kostya had known that he was going to have to leave in the morning. There was nothing he could do.

* * *

Anton didn't think about Kostya much over the holiday. He didn't even tell Svetlana. He thought there was no need. He loved her and wanted to be with her for the rest of his unnatural life, and that was that. Whereas Kostya was not only a Dark One and a vampire but another man, and although these were simplistic reasons not to be with him, Anton thought they were damn good ones.

He came back to Moscow with absolute conviction in his decision to let Kostya go - but, of course, absolute conviction can be broken faster than anything else in the universe, even in the absence of the loved one. Anton could have, at any time, seen a young man with water plastered to the back of his neck after a shower, caught a whiff of the conditioner Kostya used, heard a particular turn of phrase or spotted a boyish mannerism that he associated with Kostya's type, any one of a thousand things that would have set desire in motion once more. The odds were not in his favor.

However, Kostya spent Anton's holiday thinking hard about what he would do and say when he saw the older man again. Anton reminded him of a father somehow - not Kostya's own father, but a father in general. He was bigger than Kostya, with a rough voice and tired eyes, and aftershave that was somehow paternal in and of itself. So it was no wonder that Kostya wanted to present himself as a man to him. After all - they were brothers! And this sort of thing happens between brothers, that's all right. Nothing for old Gorodetsky to get himself worked up over, eh?

He was certain that Anton was going to reject him. As long as it was going to happen either way, no use pleading. No use telling him he loved him. He didn't want Anton to have to say it to his face - that what had transgressed between them had now become impossible, and it would not come again. Instead he'd play the tough guy, impress Anton with his casual attitude and sexual freedom.

The night Anton came back, Kostya was sitting in the stairs in the moonlight. He had brought down his old bike from the shed, and was using an old rag to clean the dust away. He had also managed somehow to dig up oil for the joints, and a new chain to replace the old, rusted one. It was too small for him now, but he figured he might be able to sell it.

When Anton saw him, he set his suitcase down. The clack of the wheels against the tile started Kostya, and he forced a smile of surprise. "Hi, Anton!" he said, his voice just slightly too loud. He pretended to be very interested in what he was doing. Didn't so much as look up. "How was Koktebel?"

It surprised Anton. Threw him off guard. He had been steeling himself for a lecture. "Koktebel? About how it is always is." He paused. "Do you need help with that?"

Kostya snorted. "Forget it. What idiot can't fix a bike chain on his own?"

Snot-nosed kid!

Anton shrugged. "Well, suit yourself." He lifted his suitcase with a grunt and continued on his way.

And that was the end of that. The subject was now closed. For better or for worse. The next conversation they had was much the same. Anton found he couldn't even smile at Kostya's posturing. After that, they didn't really talk - although every once in a while Kostya would corner him and say, with sexless affection, that he still liked Anton quite a lot. And although it troubled Anton when he said that, it was because they were natural enemies, not because they had once been lovers.

Missions came and went. Kostya got his license to hunt. Anton married Svetlana. The destinies of the two men diverged as smoothly as a forked river.

In a world where one could step into the Twilight and fix the shards of teacup back together simply because it hadn't been its destiny to break, it was hard not to be conscious of the forces of fate. Kostya, even as a Dark One, and a future biologist at that, sometimes found himself trying to catch The One Who Is and Does Things manipulating the ebb and flow of the future.

Even in circumstances that appeared to be clear-cut, there was no way to make an informed decision. Take a young woman on Arbat Square spotting two things she likes, heading in opposite directions. One of them is a lost white terrier who needs a bath, and the other is a handsome young man brimming over with the potential for love. The terrier is headed down Vozdvizhenka, whereas the young man turns at Znamenka.

If she chose to go after the dog, maybe The One Who Is and Does Things would reward her for her charity towards animals, and when she caught up with it, the dog would be wearing a collar on which is written the owner's name and address. The owner turns out to be, lo and behold, the young man on Znamenka - or some other, similar kind of young man.

However, it's possible that The One Who had meant to give her a chance to abandon her childlike ways and move into the world of adulthood, in this case by going after a man, perhaps for the first time in her life. And so he'd punish the young virgin by letting the terrier snap at her fingers when she bends down to pet it. By the time the young woman makes her way back to Arbat Square, if she still had the heart to try, the young man would be gone. She would be left with nothing at all, beyond the vague sensation that she had disappointed somebody, somehow.

And so Kostya found himself wondering. If he had thrown himself into Anton's arms there, in the darkness of the stairwell - as he had wanted to, and as Anton was expecting - or if he had met his eyes and held the gaze just a second too long - or even something as far removed as having remembered to pick up bleach on the way back home from the university - then maybe the ineffable machinery of the world would have brought Anton down on his knees to him instead.

Who knows?

* * *

There was one thing that had happened, though. Sometime after I had returned from Koktebel. Kostya had come over, presumably for the express purpose of raiding my fridge. He was sitting on that windowsill, drinking blood. I was over on the couch, fiddling with my CD player and trying not to watch.

It hadn't bothered me until now, until our first moment of silence together since ... well. But now - thinking about it - what had he meant when he said that there was nothing Sveta could give me that he couldn't? It was a cliched thing to say. Petulant. Adolescent. One of those statements that sounds significant, but means nothing. And yet ...

Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe there was something only I could give him, something that nobody else can.

"Hey, Kostya," I called.

"Hrm?"

"Can you get this out for me? Goddamn battery's stuck."

"Yeah, sure." He plopped himself down on the couch. The poor springs heaved. To say that old thing was collapsing was an understatement. I had had to stick a sheet of plywood beneath the cushions to give it some semblance of structural integrity.

Kostya had no problem with the batteries. His fingers were a lot smaller than mine.

"Thanks," I said. He shrugged.

"Do you want to watch TV or something?"

"Eh ... I don't know. I never liked TV much."

Smart guy.

Kostya picked at his outfit's seams. He was wearing one of those shirts that were designed to look as if you were wearing them inside out. They were fashionable at the time, and, as you can imagine, a tad expensive. Why they didn't just save their money and turn the clothes they already had inside out was beyond me.

"Can I have a cigarette?"

"You shouldn't be smoking."

"I know."

We lit up.

"How's the Day Watch treating you?" I asked.

Again, he shrugged.

"I just joined, I don't know. I really don't know."

The silhouette of three birds appeared momentarily on the far wall, as a flock of crows flew past the window. An indistinct longing came up, but not a strong one. It passed with the shadows of the birds.

That was all. The word "loss" came into my mind, for no real reason at all. How long did birds live? Where do the crows roost, in this city? It was possible that I would never see these particular birds again - but then again, they're all the same. If they flew by again, I'd never notice.

"Am I a bad person?" said Kostya. His voice was blank. "Were we wrong to do this?"

My heart went out to him. I can't answer that question for you, Kostya.

I'm afraid to even try.

"You know what I do sometimes?" I said. "I put the CD player on random, and see what song comes up. Sometimes, like if I have a question to ask ... well, it seems to know exactly what I need to hear." I took the bud from my left ear and offered it to Kostya. "Look, I want you to listen to something with me."

He didn't take it, and he wasn't smiling. "Do you do that sort of thing with Svetlana?"

This was the first time he had brought her up.

"Yes, but that's not the point."

"Then I'm not going to do it with you."

Now was a hell of a time to start getting jealous.

"I just want you to do this one thing, Kostya. It's important," I said, without a lot of emotion behind it. If he wanted Svetlana to have one more experience with me that he could never have, well ...

The same thought occurred to him at the same time. "All right," he said, and sat down next to me. Our shoulders touched. We had to sit close, the cord was short. His temples were against mine.

I thought in passing that he was bound to me, like he had been on the roof.

The CD came to life with a whirr. Yuri Shevchuk's gravelly, exhausted voice. The barren sound of a guitar.

I'm coming to you - this strange place  
Fog rising from the marsh, white and endless  
I am your eternal lover, golden bride  
Thoughts lick the window panes like flies.  
Winter at my back. I'm not old. I'm not young.  
Night is like the elevator that the poet passed away in.  
I am content, filled to the brim, but hunger awoke me  
Hands feel for a pulse, I am yawning at the light

What was the name of that song?

Yuri Shevchuk answered for me.

_Freedom ..._

Kostya looked at me. The message was unambiguous. "Anton - Antosha - " he said. His voice caught in his throat.

I took him by the shoulders. Konstantin Saushkin. Dark Other. Vampire.

"Kostya," I said sorrowfully, "Kostya, no."

 


End file.
